ENTERPRISING SPIRIT


A new scheme is helping students turn their research into viable businesses, and unlocking a wealth of new intellectual property


Facing their future


The University of Edinburgh has been successfully supporting student entrepreneurs for more than a decade, via enterprise initiatives such as LAUNCH.ed. Now, Edinburgh Research and


Innovation (ERI) aims to provide a dedicated service for genuine technology entrepreneurs among postgraduate students through a new initiative called the Accelerator Pipeline that has the potential to deliver huge value to the students, the University and the wider economy.


After discussions with the University’s student entrepreneurs in 2009-10, ERI identified a particularly large subset of the student community whose entrepreneurial aspirations were not being met by the current provision of services. These entrepreneurial postgraduate students (PhD and research Masters students) often develop market- focused intellectual property (IP) during their studies. However, due to that IP being owned by the students themselves, this hidden resource of University knowledge and IP was neither recognised nor exploited. This group’s requirements


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were comparable to members of University staff spinning out platform technology companies. They needed access to the sort of top-end high- growth company formation support that is several steps up from the enterprise support provided by the leading universities in the UK. They needed something different. To address this clear market gap, LAUNCH.ed created the Accelerator Pipeline – a programme of support for Edinburgh’s research students with high-growth-potential business propositions based on knowledge and intellectual property developed at the University. But, at Edinburgh,


“Companies emerging from the Accelerator Pipeline are a step ahead of their spin-out counterparts”


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